Leonhard von dem Hove

Leonhard von dem Hove (* 1519 ; † 1590 in Aachen ) was a German lay judge and mayor of the imperial city of Aachen .

Live and act

Leonhard von dem Hove is mentioned for the first time in 1556 as a member of the aldermen's chair. In 1561 he held the office of master builder and from 1567 to 1570 worked as a send judge in the Aachen sending court . As a representative of the city of Aachen, he signed the imperial farewell to the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1566 . In the years 1564/65, 1567/58, 1569/70, 1572/73, 1574/75 and 1580/81 he was elected mayor of the city of Aachen from among the lay judges. In his last term of office he had to come to an arrangement with the mayor from the ranks of the guilds, the avowed Protestant Peter von Zevel , as the Protestants had a relative majority in the city council at that time.

Von dem Hove always represented the position of the Catholic part of the citizenry, who wanted to defend themselves against the Protestant forces, which were increasingly gaining influence , in those years of the high phase of the Aachen religious unrest. For example, von dem Hove and other council members campaigned in 1577, among other things, for the Corpus Christi processions , which had been canceled in previous years out of consideration for the Protestant movement, to be reintroduced. After this project had failed as well as the efforts to bring about a Catholic majority among the councilors in the city council, von dem Hove initially stopped participating in council meetings as a "stale" (former) mayor from 1581 and finally left a few months later the city with 14 other Catholic councilors and retired for the rest of his life on his estate in Lemiers .

The denominational problems also led to differences of opinion in the lay judges' chair when, for example, replacements were to be elected in 1583 because of three deceased lay judges. The Catholic candidates proposed by Leonhard von dem Hove were blocked by Protestant lay judges, whereupon the proceedings ended up at the Reich Chamber of Commerce (RKG). Von dem Hove did not live to see the final judgment, as the RKG had not yet decided on the composition of the Aachen jury chair until his death in 1590.

Leonhard von dem Hove was married to Katharina, born von Gülpen and widowed von Eys-Beusdal. The couple had a surviving son, who in 1602 received compensation of 825 Reichstalers for losses suffered during the religious unrest. In addition to the estate in Lemiers, the son inherited the feudal lordship from his father over the Brandenburg monastery in Sief .

Literature and Sources

• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen: The lay judges of the Royal See of Aachen from the earliest times until the final repeal of the imperial city constitution in 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 50 , 1928, ISSN  0065-0137 , pp. 276-281 , no. 236 ( p 276/277 and p.280 / 281 ).
• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen: The Aachen mayors from 1251 to 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 55, 1933/34 , pp. 62/64 ( aachener-geschichtsverein.de [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).